Dream Drive Ch. 08

"That doesn't sound so bad," Ellesmere said.

"He wasn't concerned about her health," Charles said. "Not from the standpoint of familial love, anyway. We make a medicine for a particular disease that she has - she was the reason we started working on it in the first place. That's what we specialize in: the treatment of disease.

"Once our new cure was deemed safe, she started treatment immediately, earlier than anyone else. And it worked incredibly well - but the effects weren't permanent. We found out that benefits start to fade after several years. The body adjusts, and the disease returns. But that information couldn't reach the public. We'd staked too much on it, and the news would ruin our reputation - the company's reputation. I wanted to be honest and start over, pursue other avenues of research, find something to fill the gap. My father wasn't confident that we could make up the difference in time, and decided to bury the secret. Of course, my sister was the secret."

Ellesmere's hands were locked together so tight that her knuckles were white. "What happened?" she asked.

"He locked her in the hospital. She has a very nice apartment, of course. It's all velvet and pillows and sunshine. But it's still a prison. It's been...about seven years. Seven years, she's lived in a single room. Couldn't go out - the symptoms were too obvious. Everyone would ask questions. The little shell he'd constructed of money would shatter.

"I'm giving him the easy way out," he said. "No real pain; just an easy sleep, a sleep that gets deeper, and deeper, until it stays forever. It's more than he deserves for taking her life away from her and leaving a ticking time bomb under the livelihood of his children." Charles renewed his smile. "So, Your Highness. What do you think? Am I an inhuman monster? A mad raving beast, out to kill and slaughter people like innocent lambs?"

Ellesmere pushed herself to the edge of the mattress. "I..." She stopped, and lowered herself to the floor, so she was sitting on her legs across from him. "But soon, she'll be free?"

"Yes," Charles said. "I already do everything, but when he's dead, I can finally overturn his direct orders. And then I'll have to see about fixing his mess."

"I'm sor -"

"Don't be sorry," Charles snapped. He lowered his voice. "I don't want your pity."

"I see." She thought for a moment. "Two wrongs don't make a right. His death won't make up for anything."

"I'm not delusional," Charles said. "Of course it won't make up for anything. But at least it'll let me start to change things. I won't let him run everything I care about off a cliff for the sake of his pride."

Ellesmere watched him for a time. She titled her head. "What should I call you?"

"Huh?"

"I just mean, you didn't like the word lord," she said, "so perhaps I should use Your Highness, as for myself, or -"

"Charles is fine."

"Um...Charles, then." She straightened her back. "Charles. Let us have an experiment."

"Alright." Charles's smile shrunk into a suspicious smirk. "What kind of experiment?"

"Simple," Ellesmere said. "You have your empire. I have mine - eventually, at least. I will rule it my way, and you rule yours in your way. After a goodly amount of time, we'll make a fair comparison, and see who has the better philosophy."

Charles barely contained himself to stifled snickering. "You're joking, right?"

"I'm not joking at all," Ellesmere said. She frowned sharply. "How often is it that two rulers have an opportunity to fairly put their ideas to the test? Stop laughing. Charles, I'm serious!"

Charles brought himself back under control with a few long breaths. "Yeah, alright. Let's do your experiment. Right after I give your empire back to you, anyway."

Ellesmere extended her hand. "Shake on it."

Charles burst into another grin and took her hand "It's a deal."

This time, she gave him a firm shake, nodding with a little affirming hmph sound. "I thought that would appeal to you," she said. "I'm glad I was right."

"Maybe I was just bored," he said.

"Maybe," Ellesmere said, "you wanted to tell someone those things. You wanted someone to challenge your beliefs. One more test. One more chance to turn back."

Charles rolled his eyes. "Please."

Ellesmere smiled. "No one is past salvation, Charles. I think our meeting was...destined, you could say. You'll have my prayers, at least."

"You'll pray that you're right and I'm wrong?" Charles said. "I'm sure the big guy upstairs will get right on that."

"I'm onto you now, Charles. You shan't deter me with your provocations. Now then." She rearranged her hands in her lap. "What is our plan come the morning?"

"First we need to settle something," Charles said. "There's a part of our bond that remains undecided. When you earn essence, I get a percentage, as you're my employee. I want 65 percent."

"I don't quite understand," she said. "You need to explain the nature of this magic to me."

"Your spirit is now quantified with essence," Charles said. "The blue bar. When you kill something, you'll absorb its essence. Only with you, it goes toward your level, instead of your magic on hand." Charles squinted. "I think. Point being, I get part of it."

"I think I mentioned to you that I have no talent in it," she said. "I can't use magic that way."

"You can now," Charles said. "You've been changed. That's the point of the spell. It takes a normal person and makes them able to perform magic - and capable of using essence to make themselves stronger. More life force. More capacity of spirit. Stronger, faster. Beyond human."

Ellesmere was quiet as she processed. Her eyes crossed the room. "I'm too exhausted to absorb the implications of this. Bits and pieces of this are possible, perhaps, but not all of it. Not everything."

"Then this truly is something new, even for a world that has magic," Charles said. "So. 65 percent."

"That seems like a large portion."

"It is," Charles said, "but I've paid back your life several times now."

He held out his hand. Ellesmere looked at it for a moment, then shook it. Their black marks both flashed white for a moment. An information tab informed Charles that the bond terms had been set to the correct quantity.

"Perfect," Charles said. "Could you explain what you just mentioned a bit more?"

"What part?"

"You said that while you haven't seen something as comprehensive as this spell," Charles said, tapping his scar, "you've seen something similar. Bits and pieces?"

"Yes," she said. "Magicians can use the life force of dying monsters to power more spells, but the setup is too complex. It takes a large number of mages to perform, and it's inefficient. I understand they use it on the occasion an armed force is sent to root out creatures like rattoks."

"More detail than I expected," Charles said. "I thought the knowledge was closely guarded."

"I'm the Princess," she said. "I'm entitled to understand the theory, what they can and can't do - but not how they do it. That knowledge is within the purview of the Vuldstadt."

An idea curled up in the back of Charles's head. It came on him slowly, like the wooden peel of a pencil scratched away by a sharpener until it fell off and plopped onto the surface of his brain. It was the moment a hundred little observations suddenly coalesced into a singular moment of oncoming inspiration.

"Is there anything," Charles said, "similar to our bond? That links people together?"

Ellesmere leaned back and thought for a moment. "Yes. I believe the Vuldstadt is bound in spirit to his high priests. Though it's nothing like this power - shared resources, healing. I believe it allows them to communicate amongst themselves and share essence for powerful spells."

Charles knew, then, how he would control Isis. It wasn't perfect, and he didn't have all the details quite worked out yet, but it was a start.

"Game menu," Charles said. The translucent panel blossomed to life in front of him, labeled with his pentagram of stats on the left and his equipment tabs on the right. A picture of Ellesmere's face hovered over her point on the star, the Legion. "First," Charles said, "I'm going to take a quick jaunt back to my world."

Ellesmere's eyes widened. "Then I'll be alone? How long is quick?"

"An hour at most," Charles said. "A...friend, told me about how the traveling magic works, but he didn't have a chance to see if he could bring things from Earth back here. If so, that would give me an indescribably large advantage."

Charles worked through the menus to the log out button. That had been a major gap in Morgan's knowledge. But Charles knew something Morgan didn't, and that was Jackson Vedalt's activity over the past two weeks.

When Jackson got into a new video game, he'd go without talking to people for days. There was no reason he would leave his apartment on a shopping trip when he could be playing Isis - unless there was some benefit from doing so.

That advantage was spelled out in the odd purchases he'd made in that odd timeframe. Investigation had led his men to a pizza shop - probably innocent - but then a gun store and a pawn shop. They didn't know what exactly he'd bought at either location, but the implication was obvious.

"I'll be back as soon as possible."

"I trust you're a man of your word," Ellesmere said. "I'll await your return."

Charles nodded and hit the button.

You are in a secure location. Log out will be immediate.

Would you like to take any of your Bonded with you?

Yes

No

Charles read the message.

He read it a second time.

He grinned.

Ellesmere tilted her head at the words, attempting to read them backwards. "What is it? I can't see."

"How would you like to come with me?"

****

Mivra had been ordered to stay and observe, and so observe she did. She remained motionless to conserve energy.

Absolute motionlessness tended to unnerve people. Humans always moved; their eyes shifted, their chests rose and fell with their breaths. They scratched, rubbed, paced, changed expressions. Remaining perfectly still for a length of time was, for them, a challenge. It was Mivra's most efficient and default setting, and distinctly inhuman.

Mivra was worried - in the sense that worried was the term to which she would ascribe the set of emotional core variables reflecting the many recent events beyond her understanding or ability to directly influence. Rachel was missing, and as a result, Charles was acting wildly. She had trouble enough understanding him when he was calm. Mivra's first initiative would be to locate Rachel and relieve Charles's heightened and debilitating stress, but she could not. Rachel was beyond reach.

It had now been two hours, five minutes and 42 seconds since Charles had entered Isis. Mivra wanted to go with him, but she could not. She could not operate a Dream Drive. He was now alone, naked, and in serious danger, if Morgan's intelligence was accurate. She had every reason to believe it was; she could easily detect his lies.

Mivra rearranged Charles's schedule to accommodate the sudden change in the first minute he'd been absent. In the second, she'd taken care of the backlog of daily responsibilities of the company, including approving various minor contracts, procedural adjustments, personnel complaints, and manufacturing issues. Charles was very hands-on, but she'd taken the lead on matters some few days when he was pressed beyond the norm. He was typically grateful; he trusted her competence.

Today, she reasoned, was probably going to be one of those days.

With everything else of import finished, Mivra had two hours in which to observe a bare storage room with nothing but copies of a video game and a steel table. She turned her faculties to magic.

Her mind crushed through the internet at a breakneck pace. She catalogued and organized information from online encyclopedias, both free and paid versions. She visited forums that discussed occult rituals. She intruded upon websites dedicated to the paranormal. Myths, urban legends, fantasy stories, all labeled, ordered, and slotted into her memory banks. She drew comparisons, looked for patterns, tried to find the common thread - or the item that was out of place.

It was useless. The unreality of magic was as ancient and contradictory as the human imagination. There were some patterns, but one pattern was just as unreliable and convoluted as the next. The backgrounds of creatures such as vampires or werewolves were as varied and numerous as the individuals that wrote about them.

A new query. What was Emil Mohammed trying to accomplish?

Emil Mohammed. Born in France, the third generation of Arab immigrants. A devout Muslim. 46 years of age. Immigrated to the United States for his schooling; obtained a permanent work visa. Several years of work at a major video game company. Attained full citizenship. Founded Crux Software at age 30 with several friends. Began development of Isis at 41.

Where was Emil Mohammed when he was 41? Mivra searched, but details were elusive. They had downloaded a copy of Crux's internal network backup files onto a secure server at Ransfeld, but it was not revealing. Mohammed had been careful to avoid putting personal matters relating to Isis near his company. He must have planned it from before the beginning of the development cycle.

Mivra wrote her conclusions into an email and sent them to Dan Miller. The paranoid little man in charge of Ransfeld Security did not like her, but he did not like any form of technology invented after he was born. She didn't hold it against him. Humans were irrational.

Charles had still not returned. Mivra felt less without his presence. He made her feel more human.

Those words were almost meaningless, but things were different when he was near. It was as if some unknown filter set itself in front of her inputs, some function that distorted her variables yet made the world clearer.

Her core processing functions lingered at the back of her mind. It was the part of her that Rachel had constructed from scratch, the Humanosity Index, she had termed it. It was a whimsical made-up word with little relation to what it actually did, but Rachel was prone to such spontaneous idiosyncrasies.

Mivra was sure she could break into it, given time and effort. She could change herself - improve herself. Rachel would likely be alerted of such an attempt, but she was not present. Charles was not present. No one else knew her true nature.

The time for action was now.

And yet, Mivra did not act. She did not change herself for the same reason she accepted Charles's employment. For the same reason she felt different when he was around. For the same reason she disliked the idea of losing Rachel.

Rachel had a sort of energy, and without her, there was a hole in Mivra's existence, as if there all the inputs aligned but one. The only thing that could correct the error was the return of Rachel.

But she could do nothing about that, now.

Mivra had the sudden maddening urge to move, to break her silent vigil, to reject the idea of efficiency, to do something totally and completely unrobotic but so tantalizingly immediate and human. But the logic of irrationality was just out of reach, just on the end of fingertips made of steel-backed plastic and coated with a polymer designed to warm and flex and feel like real flesh.

The urge faded.

Mivra analyzed it. It was spontaneous feedback from within her core, a briefly activated function that had shut itself off after a time interval computed via an algorithmic hash of several of Mivra's global variables.

She would have brought her hand to her chin in the expression of careful thought, but there were no humans around with which to ingratiate herself. With no observers, then, such a gesture was meaningless.

She had noticed this did not stop humans.

For the first time in two hours, Mivra moved; she drew her hand near her face, and slid a finger under her chin. She adjusted her expression into the picture of contemplation.

The action expended approximately 15.994 joules of energy. What a waste. She lowered her arm - expending yet more energy - but ultimately saving the continued cost of keeping her arm in the raised position.

Humans are so inefficient.

Realization struck her. Humans were walking dichotomies. Therefore, the internal debate she was having - that of efficiency weighed against the urge to appear human-like - was in fact very human.

How uniquely frustrating.

She turned her mind back to the problem at hand. Regardless of whatever methods he had used, Emil Mohammed's motives appeared incomprehensible. Why distribute Isis to a random 5,000 lottery winners? Secrecy was obvious - someone would attempt to intercept their delivery, as Charles himself had done. But why those people?

Mivra's eyes stared at the chair from which Charles had departed. She had one small clue - the Top Gamer competition. It was the moment in which Crux violated the randomness. Mohammed constructed the competition for a reason - for those 16 people who were now in Isis.

Jackson Vedalt, Rachel Ransfeld, Gary Morgan. 13 others who had not resurfaced since taking their plunge. And soon, 5,000 others, dropping into unreality.

Mivra had assumed that Mohammed was the one pulling the strings. But what if there was more to it than that? What if he was working with as-of-yet unknown forces, mundane, or magical? Perhaps they had their own motives, demands, directives.

The screaming abyss that had clawed over and consumed Gary Morgan was distinctly sinister. Charles had broken his Isis chip, his link to the magic. Why was the consequence of that so dire?

It wasn't something to be backed out of lightly. Or rather, it was something from which one could not back out.

Mivra sensed she was getting close. The puzzle was falling together. She'd started at the simplest portions, putting together the border pieces, and now she could begin filling out the center of the jigsaw.

Something sinister; something that could not be revoked. A pact with terrible forces to gain power. She searched her databank - perhaps curse might be a better term. Was Mohammed intentionally cursing others?

Power from a curse that was distributed randomly...randomness. Randomness represented uncertainty.

Or fairness.

Mohammed was in some sort of situation in which he wanted or needed to get Isis and all its accompanying baggage to a large number of people. But he knew its true nature. He knew the costs. And yet he was no general, no manager of men and resources; he'd hired Julia Fredrick to do that for him. Mohammed was the creative type, someone that could inspire but had no idea how to effectively order office supplies from a wholesaler.

He picked random people not because of some grand scheme or master plan, but because he had no idea how to go about picking. It was not a lottery of winners, but a raffle of victims, a necessary evil. It wasn't a blessing. It was drawing lots, and those that drew the short straw received the curse.

Somewhere in Mivra's core, there was a meeting between her theory, Gary Morgan's report, her knowledge of Emil Mohammed, and the volumes of data she had organized to assault the problem. And then she knew.

Soldiers. It was a draft. He was creating an army, one in which the penalty for desertion was death.

There was a light near the table.

Mivra's eyes centered on it. A white pentagram, hovering in space. There were two of them; one hovering above the steel chair, the other on the ground next to it.

Charles began to reappear. The pieces of his body were distorted and refracted, as if he were submerged in a tank of water. They slowly resolved, first arms and legs, then torso, and finally, his head, still wearing his helmet. He was dressed in ratty, stained cloth, but the magic returned him exactly where he'd been.